


Crush

by yuletide_archivist



Category: American Idol RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, everyone got the idea that Cook was in charge of Archie at the American Idol 2011 New York Christmas Eve Non-Denominational Holiday Extravaganza, proceeds to benefit St. Jude's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crush

**Author's Note:**

> Written for astolat

 

 

Somehow, everyone got the idea that Cook was in charge of Archie at the American Idol 2011 New York Christmas Eve Non-Denominational Holiday Extravaganza, proceeds to benefit St. Jude's.

"Absolutely no alcohol on screen," said the network executives, which Cook found more than a little hilarious.

"No women," said Jeff, via cell phone, which was way more entertaining than the alcohol thing, because seriously? The likelihood of David Archuleta hooking up with some girl at a Holiday Extravaganza was lower than the likelihood of Cook letting them put a cover of _Womanizer_ on his next album. (That was to say, about a million and ten against.)

"No drugs!" said Archie's agent. David privately felt that was the single most hilarious piece of advice he'd ever been given, because, one, David Archuleta, and two, who the hell was supposed to be passing around a bong at a live event for kids with cancer?

Since David was willing to bet on a distinct lack of hookers and blow, he figured he'd follow Carly's advice to keep Archie away from the sugar cookie display and then leave him to the harem of Seventeen reporters that had taken to following him around and documenting his every move. 

If he was being honest, Cook's biggest concern didn't have anything to do with Archie. It was mostly just managing not to spend the entire evening staring at him. Cook was pretty sure the entire eastern seaboard didn't need televised evidence of how pathetic he'd officially become, and anyway, TMZ's blind items had been getting progressively more and more desperate. David felt like it would probably be cruel to taunt them further.

The problem was, not staring at Archie all evening was definitely easier said than done. Because David had a thing. A minor, unavoidable thing that was clearly the product of entirely too many hours on a tour bus and a bad habit of falling for totally unavailable women. It was the kind of thing that happened when you left for a European tour and came back to find that three months of text messages and beating each other's scores on Kongregate had totally failed to convey the fact that your best friend's marketing director had decided to try to broaden his appeal to an older audience and accidentally made him into a sex object in the process.

"So, apparently my next record will sell better if I start, uh, looking at porn and tell people about it in interviews," Archie had said, casually, waiting for Cook's luggage at the baggage claim, "but all of the videos I've been watching are just, um, _weird_ ," and something in David's brain had abruptly short circuited. Things hadn't been the same since.

So really, the entire thing was the publicist's fault, because it definitely wasn't possible for a teenager to grow up over the summer on his own, and a year at college wasn't supposed to mature anyone.

On the bright side, Cook figured, it was just about sex, and so theoretically, the entire problem could be put down to not getting laid in two months and the fact that Archie's agent kept insisting on jeans that fit way too well. It could all be taken care of with a bottle of tequila and the right guy. Girl. Whatever.

Which totally explained why David kept almost managing to kill himself around Archie.

"Hey, David," Archie said, opening the door with a grin when Cook showed up at his dorm room at NYU - oh, god, he was so unbelievably fucked - to pick him up for the party, and then Cook managed to trip over nothing.

"I know you said it was going to take alcohol to get through this," Archie said, after he'd kept Cook from decapitating himself on the doorframe, "but isn't it, um, a little early?"

Really, the staring thing was probably the least of Cook's problems. He'd be lucky if he managed to stay upright.

David was relieved when, after the first half hour, all the cameras started to focus on the latest batch of contestants, and he found Archie chatting with a Rolling Stone reporter, fingers barely wrapped around a bottle of beer, leaning back in a folding chair. Archie had developed a disconcerting habit of sprawling while Cook had been gone.

"College has been great," Archie was saying, "except for, you know, um, calculus." He grinned. "Off the record, calculus _blows_."

David narrowly avoided choking on his beer. He was really starting to miss the days when Archie hadn't been allowed to use any slang. The whole choking thing made him more obvious than he'd meant to be, and Archie and the reporter both turned around.

"Hi," Archie said, face lighting up when he spotted David, and stood up, extending a hand to the reporter. "If you'll excuse me?"

Cook was definitely succeeding at pretending Archie being polite wasn't turning him on. Mostly.

"Sure," she said. "Nice talking to you, David!"

"Bye!" Archie said, then waited for her to leave before making a face. "You know, at least Seventeen doesn't ask about my sex life. I think it's just _rude_."

"Since when do you have anything to hide," David said, dryly.

"Well," Archie said, suddenly looking uncomfortable, and David almost choked _again_.

"Seriously, you're _having sex_ -" David said, and Archie almost tipped the chair over.

"Oh my go - um, no," he said, then grinned. "But I totally got to second base a couple weeks ago at a party."

David was totally going to hell. "Nice," he teased, finally. "Good to know you're holding your own against fourteen year old boys all over the US."

" _Hey_ ," Archie said, but he was laughing. "I bet Rolling Stone would be way more supportive than you."

"Sure," David said, "that reporter would _totally_ let you get to third -" and then Archie threw a Christmas cookie at him and Cook started laughing uncontrollably.

By the time they were finally allowed to leave the party, it was after one in the morning and the Nor'easter everyone had been predicting all week was already hitting hard. When they climbed back into David's car, there were a few inches of snow on the windshield.

"You had like three beers, I should drive," Archie said, and David laughed.

"You were drinking too, hot shot," he said.

"Oh, um," Archie said, going abruptly pink. "I put water in a beer bottle. My agent says I'm supposed to be more edgy, but, um, I seriously can't believe no one has ever noticed how gross it tastes."

David managed to stop laughing long enough to give him the keys, but it turned out that neither of them ended up driving, because one of the network execs stopped the car on the way out of the parking lot.

"The roads are getting worse all over the city," she said. "We can call you a cab to a hotel, but it's not safe for you to drive home."

"Oh, hey," Archie said, "my dorm's totally only five blocks from here," which was how David ended up collecting winter gear from a gaggle of reporters. Archie got a pair of rainbow gloves from one of the Seventeen people, and David had every intention of mocking him until it turned out that the only available scarf was made of pink glitter yarn.

"Awesome!" Archie said, giving him a rainbow thumbs up when he got back. "Perez will have pictures for their next expose about your sexuality."

"Says the man wearing rainbow mittens," David said.

"Oh, um," David said, then grinned. "I'm pretty sure I read an article on Just Jared that said that writing an article about me being gay would be like telling everyone about Clay Aiken."

"You know what?" David said. "That's just _sad_."

"I know," Archie said. "I like girls!"

By the time they'd walked all five blocks, it was snowing way too hard for any impromptu photography, and David was actually grateful for the scarf.

"So, uh, where's the nearest hotel?" David said, standing on the doorstep while Archie fumbled with his key card, and Archie turned around and stared for a second.

"Oh!" he said. "I thought, maybe, you'd want to - you know, stay here. Because of the, um, snow."

Archie was flushed from the walk, leaning back against the front door to the dorm, and David was suddenly pretty sure that the universe was actually out to get him.

"Oh, uh," he said. "If you don't mind."

"Oh, of course not!" Archie said.

Archie had always claimed that he totally participated in the school's dorm lottery fair and square, but David had the feeling that someone had rigged the numbers, because Archie had managed to get a two room single his freshman year while everyone else was crammed into doubles, and this year, he'd ended up in a suite with a roommate who had dropped out two weeks into the school year. David had a suspicion that Archie's dorm room was bigger than most of the upper east side apartments.

"Go ahead and make yourself at home," Archie said, gesturing to the loveseat sandwiched into a corner by the TV. "I'll be back in a minute."

Archie disappeared and - just when Cook was getting ready to start texting about whether or not he needed to send search and rescue, complete with St. Bernards - returned with a pizza box. "Um, there's a pizzeria next door," he said, grinning. "I figured you might be hungry. Seriously, you'd think they'd at least feed us at these things."

David ate a couple slices and made a serious effort not to watch while Archie peeled off his snow-soaked clothes. He looked up just in time to have a pair of sweatpants thrown in his face.

"Thanks, but these aren't going to fit," David said, and Archie gave him a weird look.

"We're, um, the same height," he said, and David realized, abruptly, that Archie had been at eye level for the past few months.

"I knew I should've kept you away from those vegetables," David joked, and stepped into the bedroom to change.

When he came out, Archie was sprawled out across the loveseat, channel surfing.

"I found the special," he said. "They're replaying. Want to see how bad everyone looks?"

"That's just uncharitable of you, Archuleta," David said, but he sat down next to Archie anyway, who leaned into David's personal space and settled his head on David's shoulder, a habit David was almost positive he hadn't had over the summer.

Most of the show was full of unbelievably stupid interviews with the latest round of contestants, but David realized that they hadn't actually been as neglected as he'd thought; there was video of him and Archuleta talking, their heads bent together, and Archie was laughing. David was almost positive he'd been telling some unbelievably inappropriate joke, but the commentary was all about how nice it was that they were still so close, even three years later.

"Hey," Archie said, almost abruptly. "You still like me, right?"

For a second, David thought he meant something else entirely, but then realized what it was, exactly, that Archie was asking.

"Jesus," he said, muting the TV. "Yeah, man, of _course_. You shouldn't even be asking that."

David's first instinct was to pull back, but he forced himself to lean in, his face _almost_ against the curve of Archie's throat. "You're my best friend, asshole."

"Sorry," Archie said. "Yeah, of course, you've just, um -" His shoulders fell a little. "My parents are pissed at me for caving to it all, you know? But it's not -" Archie smiled, but it wasn't like usual. "You can't spend a year at college and still be shocked when people swear. I just wanted to fit in, to be able to have a cup of _coffee_ without feeling guilty about it, and it feels, um -" Archie shifted. "Everyone used to laugh at me. When I didn't know what something meant, or I got uncomfortable when all of you were talking about sex, it was - I mean, I know you thought I didn't notice, but I sort of - I mean, I was na*ve, not blind."

"Hey -" David said, and Archie shook his head.

"I always felt like you were, um, putting up with me," he said. "You've just been weird, since you got back from Europe."

" _Hey_ ," David said, sitting up for long enough to meet Archie's eyes, because, _jesus_. "I wasn't - you were my _friend_."

"Then is, um," Archie said, "is something going on with you?"

David _really_ didn't want to answer that one. "You're just different," David said, finally. "Not bad different, just -" He leaned forward, rubbing his hands over Archie's borrowed pajama pants, which had actually fit. "We used to be in different places, and now we're in the same place, and it's -" David managed a grin. "Weird."

"But okay?" Archie pressed, and David laughing.

"Yeah, it's okay," he said. "Although the fact that we're apparently turning into girls is problematic."

Archie stared at him for a second, then snorted. "You wish I was buying that," he said. "You know you've been a girl for _years_ , Cook."

"Takes one to know one," David said, laughing, and somehow, the whole thing was mostly okay again, at least until David realized that there was no way either of them was going to fit on the sofa long enough to sleep there.

"I can just take the floor, no big deal," he said, and Archie threw a pillow at his head.

"We'll totally both fit in the bed," Archie said, confidently, just before he disappeared to take a shower.

Sharing a double with Archie was unbelievably low on David's list of good ideas, but David was well aware of how stubborn Archie could be, and if he tried to take the floor, he was probably going to get his ass kicked. David mostly fit in the bed on his own, and while Archie was gone, he managed to find a clean t-shirt and get the lights off. He figured that might make the whole thing less painful, which seemed viable until Archie climbed into bed beside him and David realized that sometime between the Idol tour and now, Archie had stopped being into shirts.

" _Ow_ ," David said, when Archie elbowed him as he was trying to inch away, and when he tried to move closer to the wall, Archie fell further onto the wrong side of the bed, flailed, and ended up on top of him.

"Dude, what are they _feeding_ you," David said, faking crush syndrome, and Archie - the bastard - laughed and just sprawled out further.

"Vegetables," he said, still squirming, and oh, jesus, he was twenty-eight and not _dead_ , there really wasn't any getting around that particular embarrassment. David was seriously debating whether moving would make it worse when Archie started laughing.

"Maybe, um, _you_ should have gone home with that reporter," he said, then pitched his voice low, teasing, still cracking up. "Something you're not telling me, Cook?"

David's brain, theoretically, knew exactly how to laugh it off, and when he opened his mouth to make it happen, nothing came out. "Um," David said, and Archie abruptly stopped laughing and stared.

"Oh my _god_ ," he said, and David froze.

Archie stared at him for another minute, possibly the longest minute of David's entire fucking life, and then swallowed. "So, um, you - you _like_ me?" he said, which was about when David realized that it really wasn't just a sex thing.

"It's no big deal," David said, finally, "and I know you like girls, but I don't want to lie about it to you, so, uh." He managed a smile, or at least, he hoped he had. "Yeah."

Archie looked at him a little longer, and David was about to point out that he really could roll off now when Archie shifted. "So you want to, um - go out with me?"

"Yes," David managed, tightly, unbelievably close to getting pissed at Archie for mortifying him, even if he'd gotten himself into the whole fucking situation. 

He jumped when Archie slid his fingers under David's borrowed t-shirt, settling his palm up against David's stomach, warm and still damp from his shower.

"Okay," Archie said, almost decisively. "I haven't, um, you know, gone out with someone before, but I bought you pizza, so that counts as enough of a date to kiss you, right?"

It was definitely David's turn to stare. "What?" he said. "I -"

"Shut up," Archie said, and leaned in. It took David a minute to process, and by that point, Archie had pulled back, laughing.

"Cook," he said, softly, " _David_ ," and David got with the program and leaned up to kiss him back.

It wasn't what David was expecting. Archie slid a hand up, spreading his fingers out against Cook's jaw to tilt his face up gently, and when their mouths finally met, it wasn't awkward or clumsy like every other first kiss David had had; kissing Archie was _easy_ and warm, and when Archie took it deeper and dragged his tongue along David's lower lip, David didn't even bother pulling back, just managed to wrap a hand around the back of Archie's neck to pull him in closer.

"Jesus," he managed, something like five minutes later when they'd finally come up for air, "did I know you knew how to kiss like that?"

"Oh, I practiced," Archie said, and David started laughing so hard he couldn't stop, something that even he realized was a release of all the damn nervous tension from the past few months.

"Sorry," he managed, finally, just breathing into Archie's shoulder, and Archie slid his hand back, rubbing his thumb against the the curve of David's jaw.

"I thought," Archie said, finally, "you couldn't possibly be interested, you're kind of out of my league."

"Dumbass," David said, finally. "You're so far out of mine."

"You're a _rock star_ ," Archie said. "And you've slept with a _lot_ of - um," he stammered, and David started laughing again.

"You'd better watch it," he teased, "or you're never going to get any."

It was more than a little dark, but David could tell when Archie started blushing, and it was suddenly really hard to forget about the fact that Archie was sprawled out on top of him, and that he'd never really stopped being half-hard.

"Um," Archie said, holding really still, and David laughed, relieved, and leaned in to nuzzle along Archie's shoulder when he realized why; Archie was having the same problem.

"We can just make out, Arch," David murmured, sliding a hand up and down Archie's back. "Relax."

"Yeah," Archie said, "but uh - we haven't actually gone on a date and I want to, want you to -" David realized he was getting tense. "You're going to think, um -"

"Hey," David said, suddenly getting it, and laughed. "Pizza totally counts. I'd put out for way less, with you." He leaned up, pulling Archie down for another kiss. "I'm not gonna think you're easy."

"Oh," Archie said, then in a tone of voice that David totally remembered from being nineteen and trying to stay casual, "then do you want to, um."

"Yeah," David said, laughing softly. "I want to, um."

"Shut up," Archie said, still blushing, but he let David push him over, until David was the one who was sprawled out on top, and okay, David had to admit that there were some benefits to the fact that Archie's bed was definitely too small.

"Just keep talking to me," David said, grinning, then kissed Archie until neither of them could really think straight. It had been a while since David had just made out, trading slow, slick kisses, stroking his hand over Archie's side, and he almost forgot about the fact that it was going further until Archie started making soft noises into his mouth.

"Hey, I'm just going to -" David murmured, and leaned to kiss along Archie's shoulder while he slid his hand down to press the heel of his hand against Archie's cock through his pajamas.

"Oh my _god_ ," Archie managed, trying to pull him down closer. David let him bury his face against his shoulder before he got a hand into his pajamas and wrapped his fingers around him, just letting him get used to the pressure, kissing the curve of his jaw until Archie started to push his hips up into his touch.

"Feel good?" David teased, laughing, and Archie made a noise that went straight to David's cock and then hit his shoulder, laughing too.

"Oh my god, shut _up_ ," he said, breathless, and David waited until he'd relaxed to start stroking him.

"Oh," Archie said, maybe two minutes later, " _oh_ ," and came all over David's hand.

David figured the way they were kissing wasn't exactly likely to help Archie catch his breath, but mostly, he didn't actually _care_.

"That was, wow," Archie said, finally, " _awesome_ ," and David got whacked again when he started laughing.

"I can't believe I'm having sex with such a _jerk_ ," Archie said.

"Yeah, well, maybe you should avoid musicians," David said, and Archie pushed him back again, less forcefully.

"So how do I," Archie murmured, and David's stomach flipped over, mostly because his train of thought had never gotten as far as Archie touching _him_.

"You don't _have_ to -" David said, and got hit again, so he swallowed and rolled over onto his back, kicking off his sweatpants and resisting the urge to pull the blankets up.

"There's not actually a wrong way," he said, stretching out, watching Archie, and Archie grinned.

"So, actually, um, what you're trying to say is that you're easy," he murmured, and David had to grab the sheets hard when Archie leaned across him to fumble in the bedside drawer.

" _I'm_ easy," David said, when Archie leaned back with an open bottle of lotion, and then curled his fingers around David's cock, smooth and a little cool, rubbing his thumb just underneath the head.

"Is this okay?" Archie said, leaning closer. "It's how I like - " he said, and jesus, it was definitely almost over right _there_.

"Really good," David said, and then Archie leaned in to kiss him and he stopped thinking about everything else for a couple of minutes.

"I'm," he managed, finally, and Archie twisted his wrist and kissed him at the same time and, really, there was no way David wasn't going to come all over himself.

"God," he managed, finally, when he could think again, after Archie had cleaned them both up with some kleenex. David rolled over, close, and sprawled out on Archie again, face up against his shoulder.

"Was that -" Archie said, and David pulled him closer.

"Mm," he said, because that probably just about covered it, and he was almost asleep when Archie wriggled and nudged him.

"So, uh," he said, "I really think we should talk about this," and when Cook lifted his head, trying not to be _completely horrified_ , he realized that Archie was grinning at him.

"Oh my god, I hate you," Cook managed.

"You totally fell for it!" he said, cracking up, and Cook definitely had no choice but to try to shove him out of bed. It was totally a matter of honor.

" _Hey_!" Archie said, flailing, and dragged Cook and all the blankets down with him, until they were both tangled in the comforter on the floor, laughing hysterically.

"Merry Christmas, Cook," Archie said, finally, beaming.

"Merry Christmas," David agreed, and pulled him down for another kiss, grinning back. 

 


End file.
